April 30-May 3
Edited and done May 19
Dear Friends and Families,
At the end of the last diary, I commented that we were "tired". In Porto and in our other city visits, we had been walking 10,000 to 15,000 steps a day, up and down hills even. Now we've solved the problem. We moved to a place so steep that we simply can not walk much at all, but what we can do is sit on the baloney, sip wine, and look out at the Douro River far below. How did we get in such a situation?
Leaving Porto on Tuesday was challenging since Gertrude, our friendly
GPS, insisted on taking us across the center of the city, a place where no
car is really welcome, but where many are fighting for the limited
space. Eventually, we did make it to the A3 freeway, heading
east, to the wine-making valley of the River Douro. 
The goal was the village of Mesao-Frio, or at least close to the
village. Marianne had promised that our stay would be unlike the
urban Porto digs. Getting there was easy enough, a bit more than
an hour outside of Porto, including a ten minute delay getting past the
scene of a head-on collision on the narrow road after the broad
A3. A reminder that we would need to drive the twisty roads
carefully.When we got to Casa Canilhas, we faced one more twist to maneuver as we turned into a driveway that dropped down the face of a vine-covered hill. At least the part not covered by a wonderful huge house and garden was vine-covered. Casa Canilhas turned out to be so inviting that we have hardly moved in 24-hours, except to have a couple of meals in nearby Mesao-Frio.
I'll let pictures tell the story.
Casa Canilhas     The view is spectacular and hard to describe. The Casa sits at a bend in the Douro River, high on terraced hills.  
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 Even at night, the valley is magical. |
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Lunch at a convivial
restaurant called ... Convivio. Simple setting, old American
movie on TV, original art work on the wall, and more food and wine than
we could possibly eat and drink.    |
On Thursday, after one last glimpse of the Casa Canilhas view, we headed north for another wine region. We had wanted to drive, top down, on the side roads all the way to Guimaraes, but that hit some problems. First, we got stuck behind some very slow trucks on twisty mountain roads, but the challenge of getting past the city of Almarante proved just too much. Gertrude would only route us on the autostrada and manual navigation just had us circling the same streets, never finding the north-bound highway. Oh well, top down on the freeway it was.
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The next navigation difficulty was finding our new hotel, the Casa Sezim. Gertrude first thought it was located in the middle of the toll road and only after some fine tuning did we shift to a location on the hill above the highway. Of course, getting there was still challenging, since we needed to first navigate local neighborhoods. and then the final 200 yards was a rutted dirt driveway leading to a well-worn manor house. We were wondering what we had gotten into.
We were greeted at the hotel entrance and led to our room. It was like being escorted into an old museum, literally. We were initially apprehensive at the obvious wear and tear, but we gradually came to recognize the beauty of the old environment. So far, we have learned just a bit of the local history. Casa Sezim was given to the family of the current owner in 1376 "for good works and service" by royalty of newly-independent Portugal. In its current form, it is 64 hectares (about 125 acres), half devoted to vineyards and the rest to the buildings and yards for the winery and hotel businesses. (See Wikipedia for an excellent discussion. Or another by a local expat, Julie Dawn Fox).
Our room on the veranda level opened to the family quarters as well and these old rooms remain open during the day. The walls are covered with exotic scenes depicted on painted silk. I will try to explain the setting in pictures:
Casa Sezim front facade and view of back. 
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The yard inside the facade. The main house is on the far side, offices on the left, and the fireplace lounge on the right. |
Our room, ornate and opening up onto the ...   |
... veranda. A great place for the welcome bottle of wine and to just look out at the view.   |
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Other
rooms in the main house. Walls covered with silk or linen
tapestries depicting scenes from around the world, as considered in the
early 19th Century.     |
Very
personal details, including family pictures. The lady in the
middle originally opened Casa Sezim for guests 20 years ago.
Sadly, her funeral was held in the house chapel during our visit.     |
The
original work spaces in the right wing of the building had been
converted into a wonderful lounge, library, and breakfast room.
It was also the best spot for wifi!     |
One morning I tried to
capture the garden in the sunrise light. It was a fun excursion
and made me appreciate how much work was needed for a farm and vineyard
like Casa Sezim.     |
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After settling in, we drove back into town to explore Guimaraes. The city was the site of the 1128 battle for independence from Spain and became the first capital of Portugal. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site and last year was the "Capital of Culture". Today the old center is a clean and well-restored collection of old buildings, mostly from the past two centuries but some much older. Again, I'll try to tell our Guimaraes story in a picture collection:
Guimaraes town square and most of the downtown buildings had been recently restored, even cleaning the ancient tannery pits.    Don Alfonso Henriques, leader of independence along with Donna Marianne.  
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The fortress castle sits
atop the highest hill. Inside, the granite tower "keep" stands as
a last-redoubt from earlier times. The royal chapel is simple,
but may contain the bodies of many Portuguese royalty.    Hunting birds were on display, courtesy of the local falconry club. This one was surprisingly heavy.   |
The Ducal Palace, built in
1420-1422 in th latest Northern European style, served as residence and
seat of government. It was restored in the 17th and the 20th
Centuries.  Dining room. One of several rooms refurnished in the 17th and 18th Centuries.     The chapel and one of a [pair of furnished bedrooms.   |
On Friday, we made the 476 kilometer (296 mile) drive over to the Spanish Rioja region, another wine center. The drive was longish, but otherwise uneventful. The weather was nice, but a long drive isn't fun top down, especially with as many bugs as were hitting us as we crossed the farm country. (The camera eventually would not focus past the layer of smashed bugs.)
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Our little hotel was classified as a "hostal", which I think simply means there is no one in the lobby, in fact, no lobby. The room was large and modern, quite a change from Casa Sezim. Parking was convenient, just outside on the small street, but this proved to be a problem that night as someone "flour bombed" our car and made a complete mess that we will be cleaning for the next month. Not happy.
Los Calaos de Briones, restaurant and hostal    
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Briones      
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The hills and valleys around Briones       
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Marques de Riscal, The City of Wine    To and around Elciego   
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As Marianne said in our Booking.com review, there are plenty of places in Rioja to stay, avoid Briones.
On Monday, we drove through the Pyrenees, destination Lourdes. A nice finish to Spain and reintroduction to France.
John and Marianne